Rage against Self-replicating Machines: Framing Science and Fiction in the US Nanotechnology Field

Abstract

Research in the sociology of science has increasingly begun to acknowledge the role that external influences play in shaping the boundaries and content of science. However, a scarce understanding still prevails with regard to the role of peripheral, popular movements in the emergence of scientific fields, and of professional fields in general. Through their attention to boundary work, scientific fields also provide a fruitful yet neglected context to study how actors engage in efforts to alter frames in order to adjust and negotiate community boundaries. This qualitative study of the emergence of the US nanotechnology field from 1986 to 2005 makes several contributions to knowledge about these issues. First, our study shows that peripheral, popular movements open up avenues for scientific fields by generating understanding and receptivity for novel ideas through story-telling, which gives rise to their cultural embeddedness. Second, we find that by capitalizing on such culturally embedded concepts, scientists make science particularly vulnerable to external interventions, limiting the effect of boundary work. Third, the study shows how usually persistent hierarchies between communities are tested, challenged, and reproduced in an emerging professional field. The study therefore provides understanding on how actors in the key communities are able to use framing to negotiate their positions and community boundaries within a complex, emergent field.

Data‐Driven Materials Science: Status, Challenges, and Perspectives

“…Figure 9a) to generate understanding of the field and negotiate community boundaries. [304] A recent socioeconomic study investigated the emerging field of data-driven materials science. It identified that the field is scattered and largely lacking a supportive ecosystem with nonacademic stakeholders.…”

Contestation about Collaboration: Discursive Boundary Work among Professions

“…In general, "framing" involves assigning meanings and interpreting conditions and events in ways aimed at achieving specific goals (Granqvist & Laurila, 2011;Snow & Benford, 1988); through framing, field-level actors "legitimate or delegitimize the acceptance of a particular program of change" (Suddaby & Viale, 2011, p. 434).…”

Career Resourcing and the Process of Professional Emergence

“…Relatively few studies explore and theorize processes of professional emergence. In these studies, the work practices and values of a community shape how they interact with others in a way that establishes a new occupation's distinctiveness and mandate (Fayard et al, 2017;Nelsen & Barley, 1997), or storytelling and strategic framing drive emergence (Granqvist & Laurila, 2011;Howard-Grenville et al, 2017). Our study's careers lens reveals other grounded explanations about professional emergence that extends existing theory by showing how individuals encounter each other in the first place to form communities, why they act to make new professions, and how they resource their profession-building actions.…”

“…These career-related actions are analytically distinct from, and potentially complementary to other types of actions (e.g. identity-related actions, or communicative acts) that have been theorized as important to professional emergence (Empson, Cleaver, & Allen, 2013;Fayard, Stigliani, & Bechky, 2017;Granqvist & Laurila, 2011;Nelsen & Barley, 1997). In addition, using a resourcing lens provides theoretical explanations for why certain people act to change institutions (i.e.…”